Despite being thoroughly discredited, though, the trope — the fear by white men that somewhere, somehow, a brown man is having sex with a white woman — is durable. (We shouldn’t be surprised, I guess: Congress made clear in 1964 and 1965 that African Americans had the rights to vote and to public accommodations; it took a few more years after that for the Supreme Court to add that, yes, it was OK for men and women of different races to get married. That was years after Barack Obama, the product of a black-white relationship, had been born. We treat this like ancient history, but it just happened yesterday.)

I mention this because of James Jackson.

You’ve heard of him, right? He’s the racist who drove to New York last week and killed a black man … because he wanted to kill a black man. Any one would do.

Most chillingly, Jackson said he had traveled to New York from Baltimore intending to kill numerous black men, imagining that the bloodshed would deter white women from interracial relationships. “‘Well, if that guy feels so strongly about it, maybe I shouldn’t do it,’” he said, imagining how he wanted a white woman to think.

One almost has to admire the pathetic grandiosity of the candor here. Jackson wasn’t even trying to protect white women from the “dangers” of black men — he wanted to scare the white women away from even thinking about romance with a black man.

It’s only been two years since Dylan Roof massacred African American churchgoers for the same reason. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country — and you have to go,” he told victims as he mowed them down.

Maybe, Rebecca, some of our readers will suggest that these tropes are being revived only on the extremes, by the worst of the worst, by killers who might be too crazy to fairly count as being part of the discourse.

Except: The trope is working its way into our politics. It’s not totally explicit yet, but it’s getting there.

Remember, Donald Trump opened his campaign for the presidency with this jaw-dropper:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

It doesn’t matter that the numbers suggest immigrants have lower offense levels — Trump has kept this up through the first weeks of his presidency. The White House is creating an office specifically to deal with immigrant crime, specifically to hype and rile up the population against the brown hordes.

And just in case you didn’t get the clue, the Trumpist alt-right’s favored insult du jour is “cuck” — short for “cuckhold,” which is a term, that, well…

The cultural importance of the cuckold in America is rooted in racism: in pornography, the wife of the cuckolded (almost exclusively white) husband is most commonly sleeping with African-American men, meant to provide an additional layer of humiliation if the white husband sees that man as “inferior.” In the world of pornography meant to elicit humiliation as an erotic sentiment, cuckold porn takes advantage of its viewers’ racist perceptions.

Also horrifying: It’s become a national political football, a log thrown on the fire to help ensure that we get our national blood good and boiling. It’s becoming a cause celebre in righty outposts like Fox News and Town Hall and Daily Caller and, of course, Breitbart.

My friends — yeah — at the Trumpista website American Greatness have published two posts about the matter in the last day. (Which is twice as much coverage as they gave to the failure of the GOP health bill.)

It’s hard to find a good way to respond to this. The public will hear RAPE!!!! and rational mewling responses of “that’s awful, but truly immigrants are convicted of crime less often than native-born whites” will go mostly unheard. Because this story is horrifying, and what? Do you care more about your precious “illegals” than the women in your life? Why don’t you hate rape enough?Guess you’re not an ally to feminists after all! It’s not, for the most part, a good-faith argument.

Me, I’m pretty sure can be a feminist ally and be cynical about the motives of people who otherwise don’t spend much time, interest or energy on rape prevention, except as a means of defending gun rights or criticizing campus feminists who rail against “rape culture.” The problem? Demagoguery has a better, easier, more enticing elevator pitch. It always does.

So. The Rockland story is awful. But the coverage appears to be attempting a narrative — THEY are coming for our women — that isn’t supported by the existence of one awful act. We should work to get the victim all the help and services she needs, all the community support that can be afforded her family. And we should still push back against people who cynically exploit her story to try to make the rest of us as afraid of brown men as they are.

— Joel

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Author: joeldermole

Joel Mathis is a freelance writer who lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and son. He spent nine years as a syndicated columnist, co-writing the RedBlueAmerica column as the liberal half of a point-counterpoint duo. His honors include awards for best online commentary from the Online News Association and (twice) from the City and Regional Magazine Association.
View all posts by joeldermole

About us

Rebecca Barrett-Fox is a native of the “Southern End” of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After years living in and loving Kansas, she now resides at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains in Utah with her family. A professor of sociology focusing on the intersection of religion, politics, and sex in the contemporary US, Rebecca is the author of God Hates: Westboro Baptist Church, American Nationalism, and the Religious Right (University Press of Kansas 2016) as well as numerous academic articles. You can find links to her work and her public talks on her personal blog, anygoodthing.com.

Joel Mathis is a freelance writer who lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife and son. He spent nine years as a syndicated columnist, co-writing the RedBlueAmerica column as the liberal half of a point-counterpoint duo. His honors include awards for best online commentary from the Online News Association and (twice) from the City and Regional Magazine Association.